The Voice of America has been shuttered. The White House has barred the Associated Press from press briefings since late January. The President of the United States has called CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal” and the House DOGE Subcommittee has demanded that PBS and NPR be defunded for supposed “biased and woke content.” A Turkish Fulbright scholar has had her visa revoked and been detained for more than a week, apparently due to an opinion piece she co-wrote for the Tufts University student newspaper a year ago.
It’s tempting to deem this a wake-up call for those who care about journalism and the First Amendment, but in fact, the alarm’s been ringing for decades.
As the Trump administration and congressional leadership tear away press freedoms and punish independence, they are helped by the public’s generally dim view of the news media. Other than a “COVID bump” when people believed journalism would help them through the pandemic, trust in news is in steady decline. Only 23 percent in a 2022 Gallup/Knight Foundation poll believed national news organizations keep their promise to hold the public interest at heart.
All of us should be listening.
The problem of ‘agendas’
Yes, PBS, is an outlier in some ways. Taken as a whole, the network has enjoyed the most trust in any American institution for 22 years. Its newsgathering is recognized across journalism for high standards and excellence. In a recent Pew survey, 41 percent of U.S. adults said they trusted PBS for news. Even so, we know the attacks will continue. And without further reflection and outreach by public media, the constant claims about bias and a partisan agenda will take root. We know this. Repeated often, falsehood begins to seem honest.
We’ve also got to admit that the worry about “agenda” is real. The Trust Project regularly conducts in-depth interviews about what people value in news and how they decide whether it’s worth their trust. Concerns about a hidden “agenda” commonly emerge.
The news media do have the capacity to set the public agenda by focusing on some things and not others. We must work harder to make it clear that journalism’s agenda is not self-serving or partisan – it’s always to serve the people. We must explain our strict ethics; how our commitment to accuracy, fairness and inclusion keeps our compass true.
Part of PBS’s mission is to “strengthen the social, democratic, and cultural health of the United States.” How does PBS achieve this without embracing a political philosophy? What guardrails keep journalists independent and their natural biases in check?
A pathway to trust
Every news organization must clearly explain who they are, who they aim to be, and what they do each day to live their mission and values. And just as in any healthy relationship based on trust, journalists must be willing to acknowledge when we fall short. We should listen to complaints and change practices when warranted. We should make corrections quickly and prominently.
Today, we compete with podcasts, newsletters and videos created by people who do have hidden agendas and bend facts to serve them. They attack journalists as out-of-touch elitists or deliberately biased. That’s why we must show more of our work, explain our methods and give more details on our sources. We must demonstrate why a journalist's toolbox – techniques to consult multiple sources, listen deeply, confirm facts and choose language carefully – is so valuable. Rather than impose ideas on others, expert journalists approach the world with humility, seeking to represent people and issues honestly.
Trust Project news partner FRONTLINE does this well. Along with the eight Trust Indicators®, some documentaries provide full interview transcripts so that anyone can check the full context of a conversation. Rocky Mountain Public Media, another news partner, will soon provide “Explainer” or “Q&A” labels directly on videos, with definitions at the end, so people can easily understand the difference between fact-checked pieces and those less carefully vetted.
The degradation of online information has helped devalue journalism, both through direct attacks and through association. But the same proliferation of falsehood and trickery can work in journalism’s favor if we clearly offer contrast. In a recent survey of more than 10,000 people by City Square Associates, Inc., a Cambridge-based research and consulting group, 74 percent said they were “concerned about the accuracy and reliability of news I come across these days.” And yet, among those in the study familiar with public radio and who valued trustworthiness, more than three-quarters said public radio would be good at delivering it.
For more than a decade, The Trust Project has worked with news media organizations worldwide to strengthen and demonstrate their integrity. I often point to public media as a model for engaging with communities.
The ‘work’ of explaining is surmountable
Even so, explaining values, standards and the choices that result have not been a priority for some in public media. Not every, but many a public media news executive, has told me that they already do enough. They win awards. They have strong ethics policies. To them, explaining more about who is behind their newsgathering and how they make their decisions seems risky. And it’s a lot of work.
But the work is worthwhile. When thinking about trust, people highly value transparency and high journalistic standards – along with representing “people like me” fairly, the 2024 Reuters InstituteDigital News Report found. In an on-stage interview Mar. 28 at the International Symposium on Online Journalism, NPR CEO Katherine Maher naturally emphasized the network’s ethics, integrity and excellence. But Maher didn’t stop there. She urged journalists to work actively to earn trust: to show what’s behind their work, to explain standards and practices, to clarify their choices.
“I talk a lot about the desire to be trustworthy, rather than trusted. Trusted is a static state. Trustworthy means it’s a state we earn every day,” she said. “This is a difficult moment, there’s no question about it. … We have to stand for each other; we have to stand for the principles of what we do.”